Metro report on Thursday on the rescue of the girls

A 62-year-old man had to pose as a customer to rescue her granddaughter from prostitution as police failed to make any headway in the 10 days since he had lodged a complaint.

The man had mortgaged a nose-pin for Rs 1,000 and reached Ramakrishna Lodge in the riverside resort of Gadiara in Howrah, 70 km from the city, where 17-year-old Shilpa (named changed) had allegedly been sold for Rs 40,000 and was forced into sleaze trade.

“I entered the lodge posing as a customer on Tuesday evening. While I was moving around, I met Shilpa and gestured to her to keep quiet. I also saw a part of the wall in the rear that could be scaled,” recalled the Dakshineswar resident who works in a jute mill.

At night, when no one was around, he signalled to Shilpa to follow him. While the duo were climbing the wall, another victim, Mithu (name changed), joined them.

The next day the two victims were taken to a government home in Liluah, from where Shilpa was handed over to her family on Thursday.

Shilpa, who lives in Barrackpore, was last seen by her family before she disappeared on December 8, when she saw off her grandmother at Esplanade. From there she was to go to Howrah’s Ichhapur, where she worked as a beautician. But a Barrackpore youth she knew, Laltu, met her at Esplanade, and asked her to accompany him to one of his friends waiting nearby.

“Shilpa followed Laltu and met another youth, later identified as Papai. It was Papai who blindfolded her and took her to the Gadiara lodge,” said a source close to the victim.

Two days later Shilpa’s mother started receiving calls on her cellphone, the callers threatening to kill her daughter if the family approached the police. The family lodged a complaint with Titagarh police station on December 11. “We told the officers about the threat calls but they asked us to wait. They never got back to us,” the relative said.

An officer of the police station said tracing a missing girl took time. “We did our best and were waiting for clues.”

On December 14, the grandfather approached the CID and gave sleuths the numbers from where the threat calls came.

“The officers asked me to submit 24 copies of Shilpa’s photograph. I was carrying only one, which I handed to them, and returned home to collect the rest,” recalled the grandfather.

Anuj Sharma, deputy inspector-general (CID), said he would find out whether the sleuths were sitting on the case.

The family came to know Shilpa’s whereabouts only on Tuesday, when a youth came to the Barrackpore house with a letter from the girl. “He claimed he had met Shilpa in the lodge and agreed to her request to carry the letter to the family. It was he who guided me to Gadiara,” the grandfather said.

Howrah police chief H. Kusumakar said a sleaze racket was active in Gadiara and promised to take action. Laltu, Papai, the owner of the lodge and his wife, and the manager were arrested on Wednesday.